A Good Day To Die Hard isn't the worst action movie you have ever seen. Dolph Lundgren isn't in it. Sylvester Stallone is nowhere to be found. The horribly disfigured Jean-Claude Van Damme at no point crosses proverbial swords with Chuck Norris.No, A Good Day To Die Hard is just the last gasp of a once proud money machine, the Die Hard series.

The film may even surprise you by how it sucks LESS than you thought it was going to--because let's be serious you only went to see it because you've seen all the Oscar films, seen Side Effects, seen Mama, seen whatever the current kid's cartoon is out. Or maybe it you saw it because of when you walked into the theater.

The film takes a little while to get going. You need to know that John McClain's son is in Moscow and he seems to be some sort of secret agent, unbeknownst to his father. The bad guys come, there is a pretty excellent car chase which likely smashes more cars in a single chase than any movie in history.

And that is awesome. When you cannot have a plot? Destroy things.

The plot in this movie, set in Russia, is so improbable it barely is worth slapping yourself in the head over. The Russians are all pretty much bad. And a couple of Americans set things right. The plot makes some sense within itself and there is the usual double cross.

The real question is--why?

Not why in the context of the movie--there is no answer to that question.

The real world "why" is, of course, money. It is doing respectably making over 37 million in it's first weekend. But this is still the movie that kills the franchise. No one walked out of this movie thinking "I want to see MORE."

NO ONE.

There is strange hollowness to this movie. You feel like they want to fill the movie with references to the franchise. Willis meets a chatty cab driver--reminiscent of the limo driver in Die Hard. But then you never see him again. Villains die in a similar way to how villains die in both Die Hard and Die Hard III.

Mostly the movie just plugs along, the little action movie that almost could. It never impresses, it is vaguely watchable but never terribly exciting. You never dislike the villains all that much. There is no Alan Richman or Jeremy Irons to elevate material. Hell, there isn't even a William Sadler or John Amos. One of the characters does resemble Franco Nero.

This is the example of how a franchise sputters to death. Each movie made more money than the last and had less life than the last (you could make a case #3 is better than #2). You would have to compare the 1988 dollar to the 2007 dollar to see how much the increase was in reality. But there is no more life here. There is nothing new to say and nothing interesting to do. It is to be hopes Bruce Willis begs off any sequel, effectively killing it. End it now...or make it about zombies and have Hans Gruber rise from the grave.